BlackBerry To Announce 64-Bit Octa-Core Smartphone by Next Year [Report]

Canadian handset manufacturer BlackBerry has been in trouble for quite some time. While the company continues to enjoy overwhelming success in the cross-platform messaging BBM apps, its handset business is certainly not doing well.

Earlier, BlackBerry had said that the company would also be focusing on low-to-mid end smartphones, but now it appears that we might get to see a high-end phone from the QWERTY king.

According to the report, BlackBerry is said to be working on a high-end flagship phone for next year. Codenamed ‘BlackBerry Ontario', the new phone could be part of upcoming ‘O ‘series. The forthcoming phone might be stuffed with a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 processor.

Additionally, the makers behind BlackBerry Z30 are planning to release two new series, notably, the W-series (QWERTY), and the B series supporting full touch support. Reportedly, both phones could come with Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 processor.

Further, BlackBerry is also working hard to come up with an unnamed phone, which might feature a 64-bit octa-core processor powered by Snapdragon MSM8994. This chip uses the 20 nm HKMG process and uses an octa-core 64-bit architecture. Each core can reach a frequency of up to 2.5 GHz with 4MB L2 cache, N4BB notes.

At this year's CES tech show, BlackBerry CEO John Chen, apparently told media that the company will likely to bring two new phones into market this year. One of the phones will be manufactured by Foxconn, and said to be cost under $200. Also, the said device is expected to be full touch phone. He also stated that the second phone coming from the house of BlackBerry will be a high-end one, and that smartphone would include a QWERTY key-board.